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You know what nVidia's been up to, but apparently not what ATI's been doing.

In addition to consumer graphics products, ATI makes integrated chipsets and mobile graphics chips, as well as TV-tuners and professional products. ATI's chips also power Nintendo's Gamecube console and Triforce arcade system. They even make(made?) modems.

That said, neither company seems all that diversified to me. Diversification would be one of these companies breaking into the fast food market or something similarly distant from computer graphics.

Perhaps you'd like to point out where there is a choice?

I'd like to play (for example) Donkey Kong Jr. on my portable game device, but to do so I have to buy another gadget, and have another set of media to carry and store. Why?

So what is the choice? Either get this new stuff, or collect an emulator and the ROMs, or... what? Hit up eBay for 20 year old hardware?

Or of course there's always the option of not playing the games at all. ;^)

It doesn't exactly piss me off, it's just annoying.

One great aspect of this is it will allow big-screen, front-room access to wonderful games like Advance Wars and its imminent sequel - games which have far more depth than the majority of PS2/GC/Xbox titles, but don't stand a chance of being released on any of the 'proper' consoles because they're 2D, "old school", blah blah blah. Hell, until its big brother shows up, Mario Kart Advance is flat-out the best 'fun' racer you can play on the current platforms. Yeah, that's like having a SNES in your front room (no bad thing), but a great game is a great game, just like a poor one is a poor one, regardless of poly count and shaders. Truth be told, this will probably lead to my GBA games taking up far more screen time than their GC shelfmates. Bonus.

In general, the optical media-based consoles do relatively little reading of data within a level

In games such as Valve's Half-Life and some RPGs where you can walk from room to room without a concept of a "level", this adds up. Even the PC version of Half-Life had noticeable loading freezes on the computers of the time. In games such as Nintendo's WarioWare where a typical level lasts only two seconds, this adds up as well.

Portable CD-players are pretty popular despite occasional skipping

That's because they only need to read sequentially. A Red Book conforming CD player needs to read 75 sequential blocks of audio a second. Most portable CD players read 150 blocks a second, putting the excess into a buffer, and when the data stream from the mechanism is interrupted, they empty the buffer into the DAC until the mechanism can catch up again. However, such buffering would not work in a random access situation such as a video game.

Hmmm...

According to Nintendo's web site, there will be a Grand Theft Auto 3 coming out.

BUT FOR THE GBA!!!

Very interesting.

Duke Nukem Forever was cancelled for the cube. (You must enable popups to hit "yes I realy realy want to see this page" to view this page).

If anyone has any info, I'd still like to know exactly why. Will Nintendo's next platform be out by the time DNF comes out? ( ;

Pack up to eight players into your living room and turn up the fun when you connect Nintendo GameCube systems via the Broadband adaptor.

You're trying to bust a troll, but your techniques seem ineffective. Let me point out a few things you can work on:

I thought you worked at Sega

Notice that the Sega post is from February 1994, around the time the Sega Saturn console first 2came out stateside. It's April 2003 now. Nine years is more than long enough to switch companies in one profession, even in the Far East

How's your Smell-o-vision [slashdot.org] project going?

The manual for the USA version of Earthbound (the sequel to Mother, which Nintendo never published in the USA) had scratch-and-sniff panels.

Have you finished the HIGHLY ADVANCED SPEECH RECOGNITION DEVICE

Ever heard of Hey You, Pikachu!?

Possibly the most damning evidence is this post, which calls Nintendo's handheld the "Gameboy Advance". Nintendo house style spells "Game Boy" as two words.

1) The term is ROM image, not ROM. A ROM is a microchip.

2) According to Nintendo (the bastards), ROM Images are illegal even IF you own the original cartridge. Here's what they have to say:

Can I Download a Nintendo ROM from the Internet if I Already Own the Authentic Game?

There is a good deal of misinformation on the Internet regarding the backup/archival copy exception. It is not a "second copy" rule and is often mistakenly cited for the proposition that if you have one lawful copy of a copyrighted work, you are entitled to have a second copy of the copyrighted work even if that second copy is an infringing copy. The backup/archival copy exception is a very narrow limitation relating to a copy being made by the rightful owner of an authentic game to ensure he or she has one in the event of damage or destruction of the authentic. Therefore, whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.

Even though that makes no sense. Are they saying carts are indestructible? Hell, I'm gonna keep on using zSNES and Project 64. They can sue me if they want.

Well thank goodness for this technology. I have been waiting for a product that will allow me to bother everyone in the room while playing video games.

Why wait? You can get the Gameboy Advance SP and start bothering everyone today!

Actually, the largest current consumer of PowerPC chips is more likely Nintendo. They may not lead the "Console War", but the penetration of a sub-$200 device will stomp all over a general purpose computer.

[/nitpick]

If one game can keep a genre alive then Advance Wars proves that on the appropriate platform such games can be a killer apps. The fit is perfect -- it doesn't rely on fast reactions so if the ride is bumpy it doesn't affect the games. It can be saved mid game so if your stop turns up you don't lose progress. If you like this style of game and haven't tried it you are missing out.

I hear there's even a sequel on the way in time for Christmas.

no link?

I don't know why the gamers.com site seems to miss this point, but according to the BAM website for the game it is also being published for the GameCube.

It's also listed on Nintendo's master game list under "W".

what is with the game cube, they don't even offer ethernet

Especially since they are inlcuding Metroid Prime with the purchase of a new Game Cube.

Besides 64 bit integers (but there is not a big problem adding 64 bit Longs in 32 bit processors) there is the great coolness factor:

-My PC has twice the number of bits yours ancient 32 bit pc has.
-And :" the Nintendo 64 provides 64-bit graphics and CD-quality sound at a blistering 93.75 MHZ." I gues you need the 64 bits to expand from 4 M to 8 M. Oh wait that is mega byte, not gigabyte.

Atari is still making money off of a number of those games. I agree it would be incredibly cool, but from their perspective, why on earth would they want to give the source away to the public?

"If I recall correctly, Nintendo's foray into video games grew out of their interests in pachinko."

• The casual gamer? No, they will go for the cheap GBA which has a library of hundreds titles if you count original GB games.
  
• The hard-core gamer? No sir. Any company that spends R&D cash on making a game for the N-Gage will make sure to get that game out for the GBA too. Given the list of current developers, the quantity of exclusive titles will be very small. Tomb Raider will most likely be similar to Splinter Cell--exclusive for a few months.
  
• The gadget geek? Doubt it. Again, price is an issue. But features...let's see...bluetooth? Why would I want to go up to strangers at an airport? You have to stand relatively close anyway, and a regular GBA cable will reach several feet. This thing doesn't even have shoulder buttons. And besides, any gadget-geek worth his salt will already have the GBA SP (http://www.nintendo.com/news/news_articles.jsp?ar ticleID=7901) which is smaller, plays all GB/GBA games, has a lit screen, and 10-20 hour battery life.
  

Anyone else think this is going to be popular for about a week before it dies? They think they're going to have an advantage becase they're blending all sorts of units together.

Lets compare shall we?

according to Nintendo, The GBA has a 2.9" reflective TFT screen capable of 32,768 colors and a resolution of 240x160. It is powered by a 32bit ARM processor.

This phone has a slightly higher resolution, only 4096 colors, and no mention of how good the gpu unit underneath is. Their main selling point is that you're getting games, a phone, an mp3 player and whatever else they think they can squeeze in there.

No one's going to buy this for the games if the games look only marginally better than game gear games. The game gear can match this new system color for color. If the OLD gameboy beat down the Game Gear, then how is this thing supposed to compete with the GBA as far as games go? Because it's a phone? Because it's an MP3 player? Please... most people are not going to want to carry something that big around with them. This is why phones and mp3 players are being made smaller and smaller all the time.

~shakes head~ I can't see this one going far with crowds outside the teeny-boppers, and even they will probably stick with Nintendo and a better cell phone.

Usage times: - Games up to 3 - 6 h

Reminds me of those other battery munching handhelds called "Lynx", "Game Gear", and "Turbo Express" that failed in the USA market precisely because they ate batteries too quickly.

The GBA SP is reported to run for 10 hours with the internal light on.

I find this all very intersting that Nintendo is trying to turn the GBA into a PDA when someone else has already done it.

Enter, the Songpro
It was released a few years ago on the original Gameboy and piggy backed off of the unit to play MP3s and display song titles and lyrics on the screen, but an improved version has come out on the GBA. I have listened to one of these units, they use Sandisk media and will accomodate up to the full 512mb cards.

I attended an African American Technology fair and was able to try out one of these units. I witnessed FMV on the GBA, MP3 music and lyrics, an odd form of e-book that contained biblical scriptures, and a digital stamp collection. The engineers behind this tech were light on details when I questioned them, but he did mention that the unit has its own DSP for sound and some video, and that some of the the work is done by the GBA's own processor. It apparently is written in ARM C ,but that was all he would mention. If some research is done, recall that in a previous life, this device was called the Songboy and Nintendo sued. With the help of jesse jackson they were able to get out of this jam and market a wonderful product. IT may not be a full PDA, but it is cheap and will turn the GBA into a cheap IPOD with a large enough Sandisk.

You seem to be a little off in your recollection. (my information courtesy of GameFAQS, Nintendo, and my own memory).

For starters, the Genesis was released in the US in 1989, while the SNES launched in 1991. The ~2 year time gap gave the Genesis ample time to get a leg up on the SNES (since the SNES simply did not exist). Also, you appear to still be suffering from delusions caused by Sega's "Blast Processing", insinuating that the Genesis was better hardware for side-scrollers. The two were pretty much equal in that regard, given that the developers had enough experience with each platform (later in the SNES's life, there were plenty of "fast" side-scrollers on par with Sonic technically, if not with as much staying power).

As for the titles you mentioned, F-Zero, Castlevania 4, Super Contra, Act Raiser, and Pilotwings (at least, if not more) were all first-generation titles (Act Raiser, Pilotwings, and F-Zero were launch titles, IIRC). Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just pointing out that these were titles developed early on in the life of the SNES, before developers had learned to take full use of the power of the SNES (the later Street Fighter 2 games, StarFox like you mentioned, Killer Instinct, the DKC games, etc). More, few of those games were even first- or second-party games, so I don't see how that could be seen as "Nintendo flexing its muscleS".

The Genesis got the reputation for being a great platform for sports more because of the efforts on the part of EASN/EA Sports bringing their Madden franchise to the Genesis and Sega's efforts at competing titles (the Joe Montana series, which evolved into the Sports Talk series, and could be considered early precursors to the 2KN series Sega Sports has these days). The SNES fully held its own when EA got around to doing good ports (I worship the guys at Tiburon, mainly for the amount of time I spent with NHL 96. Simply awesome). The same goes for the SNES and RPGs. The SNES benefited majorly from having Square on board (btw, slight correction -- Final Fantasy 1 was a NES game, released something like 1988 or so). Sure, there were other titles, but many of them came from Square or similar big shots (Secret of Mana/Seiken Densetsu series, Breath of Fire from Capcom but with the help of Square, the Dragon Quest series in Japan from Enix who just recently merged with Square, etc). The Genesis had its share of good RPGs, mostly from the Phantasy Star series and the Shining Force series of turn-based tactical RPGs. Genesis RPGs v. SNES RPGs. The SNES list is much longer, mostly because of Square's efforts that made the SNES out to be a good RPG platform, but there are some gems on the Genesis list as well. I guess I should do Genesis Sports games v. SNES sports games to be complete (oddly, the SNES list is quite a bit bigger here, too).

You seem to be a little off in your recollection. (my information courtesy of GameFAQS, Nintendo, and my own memory).

For starters, the Genesis was released in the US in 1989, while the SNES launched in 1991. The ~2 year time gap gave the Genesis ample time to get a leg up on the SNES (since the SNES simply did not exist). Also, you appear to still be suffering from delusions caused by Sega's "Blast Processing", insinuating that the Genesis was better hardware for side-scrollers. The two were pretty much equal in that regard, given that the developers had enough experience with each platform (later in the SNES's life, there were plenty of "fast" side-scrollers on par with Sonic technically, if not with as much staying power).

As for the titles you mentioned, F-Zero, Castlevania 4, Super Contra, Act Raiser, and Pilotwings (at least, if not more) were all first-generation titles (Act Raiser, Pilotwings, and F-Zero were launch titles, IIRC). Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just pointing out that these were titles developed early on in the life of the SNES, before developers had learned to take full use of the power of the SNES (the later Street Fighter 2 games, StarFox like you mentioned, Killer Instinct, the DKC games, etc). More, few of those games were even first- or second-party games, so I don't see how that could be seen as "Nintendo flexing its muscleS".

The Genesis got the reputation for being a great platform for sports more because of the efforts on the part of EASN/EA Sports bringing their Madden franchise to the Genesis and Sega's efforts at competing titles (the Joe Montana series, which evolved into the Sports Talk series, and could be considered early precursors to the 2KN series Sega Sports has these days). The SNES fully held its own when EA got around to doing good ports (I worship the guys at Tiburon, mainly for the amount of time I spent with NHL 96. Simply awesome). The same goes for the SNES and RPGs. The SNES benefited majorly from having Square on board (btw, slight correction -- Final Fantasy 1 was a NES game, released something like 1988 or so). Sure, there were other titles, but many of them came from Square or similar big shots (Secret of Mana/Seiken Densetsu series, Breath of Fire from Capcom but with the help of Square, the Dragon Quest series in Japan from Enix who just recently merged with Square, etc). The Genesis had its share of good RPGs, mostly from the Phantasy Star series and the Shining Force series of turn-based tactical RPGs. Genesis RPGs v. SNES RPGs. The SNES list is much longer, mostly because of Square's efforts that made the SNES out to be a good RPG platform, but there are some gems on the Genesis list as well. I guess I should do Genesis Sports games v. SNES sports games to be complete (oddly, the SNES list is quite a bit bigger here, too).

It's been pointed out in this thread that Nintendo was basically the Microsoft of the game industry in the late 1980's (90%+ of the industry, antitrust lawsuits - ring a bell). The difference is that everyone still liked them (how could we not - Mario! Zelda!)

Since then Nintendo has fallen from the king of the hill, partly due to the fact that the hill is so much bigger nowadays, but also due to some bad decisions. The Genesis came out before the SNES and Nintendo played catchup until right before the end (Donkey Kong Country pulled them slightly ahead of Sega's numbers, but Sega was still quite the contender). Then with the Nintendo 64, Nintendo pretty much got cocky. I loved the N64 but lots of the decisions they made (cartridges, no Metroid, etc.) were bad. Plus they were doing things like relying on Pokemon, franchises and the children's market. It was as if they didn't realize a portion of their target audience were now grownups

Now we have the new Nintendo. The old Nintendo stayed with a moribund format, the new Nintendo is DVD-based (though 3" DVD's). The old Nintendo wouldn't let a Metroid game be made, the new Nintendo released two last year. The old Nintendo would have had only one good game at launch, and a Mario one at that - the new Nintendo had lots of good games, none of which were Mario, and the Luigi game they did was completely non-traditional. The old (old) Nintendo would never have let a dark, violent game on their console, the new Nintendo scored the exclusives on the Resident Evil franchise. The old Nintendo would forget its roots, the new Nintendo rerelases old NES games in the form of a pack of cards. For that matter, only Nintendo would have thought of that. The old Nintendo would have swamped its console with Pokemon - the new Nintendo has yet to.

The old Nintendo would just tell its customers what they want, the new Nintendo asks its customers what they think of Xbox live.

Imagine what Microsoft would be like if, in ten years, they fell from the top of the heap and had to fight for customers all of a sudden.

I'm a longtime admitted Nintendo fanboy and it's becoming easier to do so.

Brand loyalty is still very much a factor in the minds of people who have, for thirty years, watched Nintendo go from being an infant struggling company to a leader in the game console market.

Quite a few people treat their consoles the same way other people stand behind their sports teams. The same way Apple has it's loyalists and Linux has it's advocates, Nintendo can continue to survive by catering to it's diehard following as long as it stays true to what the company represents to those fans (assuming they don't do anything immensely stupid).

That all aside, it's true that Nintendo isn't the leader in the States, but sales are still strong! If you can put the US market share aside, and look at operations over in Japan, one can quickly see by searching any of the major game news sites that the GameCube is kicking major booty, taking second and third place in sales early november! The proofs in the pudding.

'nough said.

a lot of people here on campus play snood and are also addicted to it. It is almost identical to the bust-a-move games. My mom playes bust a move for the n64 all the time, and she would challenge me to play against her (i would win eventhough the only time i play the game is when she challenges me)...and now she has my 10 year old cousin hooked on the gamel, because my mom actually bought her a copy of bust a move for the computer! I have not played snood, but it looks identical to bust a move.

i don't really know anything about where one would download or purchase snood, but it seems to me that the programmers for bust a move should be able to get money for copywrite infringement

Noone minds if you rip all your old cartridges and convert your old tapes, because noones selling them.

Then why does Nintendo have such a policy of this?

PS2 has the most games.

The Nintendo GameCube has all Game Boy, GBC, and GBA games. Super Game Boy for GameCube. Coming in May.

Now who has the bigger back catalog?

From 2001:

"Not surprisingly, Nintendo's Game Boy Advance hardware took 76% of video game unit sales during its launch week, while Sony's PlayStation 2 was pushed to second place, capturing only 10% of hardware unit share, compared to 37% one week prior to the GBA launch."

"Redmond, WA (June 18, 2001) - The best selling video game platform in history is selling better than ever. Nintendo's Game Boy® Advance sold through half a million units during its first week on the market, making it America's fastest selling game system ever."

From 2002:

"With sell through of 1.3 million units, Game Boy Advance was as popular in November as Playstation 2. Game Boy represents 33% of the total hardware market."

Also, "Nintendo held 46% of the total hardware share for the month of November." Simple math tells us that the GCN holds 13% market share. 13% < 33%

"By all reports (of which I can't find any public ones)..."
"...wish I could turn up more public info on the dismal GBA sales..."

Ever stop to think maybe there's a reason why you can't?

From 2001:

"Not surprisingly, Nintendo's Game Boy Advance hardware took 76% of video game unit sales during its launch week, while Sony's PlayStation 2 was pushed to second place, capturing only 10% of hardware unit share, compared to 37% one week prior to the GBA launch."

"Redmond, WA (June 18, 2001) - The best selling video game platform in history is selling better than ever. Nintendo's Game Boy® Advance sold through half a million units during its first week on the market, making it America's fastest selling game system ever."

From 2002:

"With sell through of 1.3 million units, Game Boy Advance was as popular in November as Playstation 2. Game Boy represents 33% of the total hardware market."

Also, "Nintendo held 46% of the total hardware share for the month of November." Simple math tells us that the GCN holds 13% market share. 13% < 33%

"By all reports (of which I can't find any public ones)..."
"...wish I could turn up more public info on the dismal GBA sales..."

Ever stop to think maybe there's a reason why you can't?

Seriously, they should probably be going out of their way to appeal to creative non-geeks, artists and writers who can come up with new ideas and revitalize the stagnant game market. Sure, you can always eke out a few dollars from the latest boring iteration of a proven formula, Grand Theft Auto 7 or Warcraft VI. What the industry needs is fresh ideas from different sorts of people.

Ideas are cheap. Go to any game developer, be they an artist, programmer, level designer, or whatever, and you'll find dozens of interesting ideas for games.

There are two problems. 1) Creative doesn't mean good. An idea may just be stupid. A creative idea might even be interesting and exciting, but not actually produce something fun to play (like the inspired but unplayable Black and White). 2) The business types are cowards. Generic Fighting Game XXVII is seen as safe. It doesn't matter that there are (even after filtering out the bad ideas), many, many creative ideas available to them, they're only interested in low risk projects. It's harsh, but it's also their money.

All that said, while yes the industry is awash in clones and knock-offs, there is always some genuine innovation going on. In the last year for the PS/2 we've seen imaginative titles like Sly Cooper, Kingdom Hearts, and Rez . On other systems we saw Animal Crossing, Freedom Force, Morrowind, and Mafia . Head back a little further and you have brilliant titles like Ico, Jet Grind Radio, or Pikmin . Yes, Grant Theft Auto: Vice City and Warcraft III are both derivative, but they're sequels to cutting edge games that changed expectations. Grand Theft Auto III redefined open ended game play and believable worlds. Warcraft effectively popularized real-time strategy games. Perhaps they're derivative, but they're fundamentally good games which have been continually refined and improved. Why pick on them if they shipping games that are genuinely fun? Instead, complain about Generic Real-Time Strategy II, Racing Game Number 8576, or Street Soul Mortal Ultimate Fighter Extreme Blade Combat IV.

The FSF "Everything must work with the GPL or else" is a very... Seatle Corporation perspective.

Which Seattle corporation? This one, or the one down the street?

I still believe it would be hard to make a game as pleasing/atmospheric as they did in '96 with the 64.

Not even Sunshine?

Um... Nintendo owns Nintendo. Why would you think Mattel has anything to do with them? (As far as I know, the Power Glove was the extent of their involvment) Nintendo's 113 year history can be found here

I once read a very well respected Japanese developer said (I think it was Yuji Naka) [Some companies]"...make games at the desk." He was refering to game companies making games to make money, not to create something fun to play.

Electronic Arts is in the video game industry making sound business moves and producing disposable rubbish for an eager consumer base. They are no longer Electronic Artists and they no longer make great video games. This shows in the huge amount of crap they spew out each year.

Other companies were getting to be guilty of the same thing, but they seem to have realized it and are trying to make a turn for the better. Capcom, for instance, has pledged a shift towards quality and innovation, and shortly afterwards announced 6 new fairly unique looking titles.

3DO claims to be making a similar shift, and has cancelled many projects to focus on a few unique titles. Trip Hawkins even forked over his own personal money to help fund the company further along. How many CEOs do you know of who would do that? (Well, the President of Sega did that, too, then died shortly afterwards.)

Many of the more respectable publishers and developers are making this shift towards quality, but Electronic Arts openly clings to "tried and true" titles, even if it means saturating the market with crap.

I don't rant about it like I used to. I just stopped buying the shit. After all, there are other great video game developers out there.

LOL! Too true! I've got the game, and I have to admit, it's all hype. I preordered it months ago when it was still supposed to be the next Dave Mira game. Mira pulled his name and likeness from the title, but it's still a great BMX game. The eye candy doesn't hurt, but it doesn't add too much either.

But there are plenty of M rated games for gamecube. Games I wouldn't buy for younger kids, but I have no problem with myself. Dead To Rights, Mortal Kombad: Deadly Aliance (though I hate MK games), Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, and now 0, South Park: Chef's Luv Shack (N64), Bloody Roar: Primal Fury, which although it has no actual *blood* in the game keeps it from having an M rating, some people might find it's content objectional.

The list of Nintendo's M rated games isn't very long, but that doesn't mean that you can buy your kids just any game and be assured that it will be kid friendly. That's what the ratings are for, not diffrent systems.

I'm 23 and I only have one console, the Gamecube. I chose it largley because of Nintendo's great first party games. Are many of them aimed at kids? Maybe. I'd prefer to think of them as "acceptable for kids". I can enjoy a Mario game like Mario Sunshine, but I can't really enjoy a game like Disney's Donald Duck: Goin' "Quackers". The diffrence is that one is solidly aimed at kids and adults would have no interest. The other is just a fun game for all ages.

For every Grand Theft Auto or Splinter Cell, there are 10 games from Nintendo that are just more fun than 90% of the other consoles' titles.

That said, I do take issue with the new Zelda game ("Celda" as it's become known) coming out next year.

Zelda was always a bit cartoony. But it was always a bit serious too. An epic adventure, with history and engrossing gameplay and you really felt like part of an epic adventure.

It's not that the new Zelda is going to be cartoony, that's not what I have issues with, per se. It's the *style* of cartoon they're going for. They're going looney toons, rather than say, Robotech, or Batman. The former had anvils dropping on heads and streachy arms and rabbits tying shotguns into bows, so they'd explode in your face. The latter were, for the most part, realistic, (for lack of a better word) despite being animated. The meduim didn't corrupt the content.

Previews I've seen of Celda, show a cutsey link running from Moblins off of a cliff. He jumps, grabs onto something, and the moblins follow him off, look down and then fall. Lots of saturday morning cartoon type action like that.

I don't think that sort of thing is wrong per se, but I definatly think Zelda was the wrong franchise to take this route with. Mario, or Kirby, or Donkey Kong would have been much better choices for this kind of slapstick action.

These People are known to do a great job appealing to the younger market segment. Get one of their controllers and an adapter, or just get a PC controller that is very close in size and design.

This topic is on fire. While the embers cool on this wildly interesting and thought provoking story that has, in may ways, changed my life, take a look at some other related reading: Nintendo's corporate IP statement. Oodles of fun. Nintendo sues you, be it state side or Soviet Russia.

Why on earth would I need a pair of these glasses when I already have the perfect headache inducing piece of kit in this ?

I think later versions came with a free pack of aspirins.

Good thing that some companies still make game consoles.

Sorry, but I have karma to burn and had to say it.

Erm no, it has more ram. It has less than the 64mb in the X-Box, but more than the PS2's 32mb. Its got 40mb total of ram, 16 being "A-memory", 81mhz D-Ram and 24mb of MoSys 1T-Sram. I'm sure it could be made to run Linux, but as of yet, nobody is known to have cracked the disc system. You can see the rest of the specs here.

I don't know about arcarde ROMs, but all console games come with a license that says that you cannot make any copies of the game, including for back-up purposes. So even if you own the game, it might now be legal to emulate on the computer.
See here for Nintendo's policy.
Or try a google search for emulation legal

I've got no interest in turning my gamemachine into a typewriter/calculator/browser.

Why would a fellow want to even try to turn a roughly cubic gamemachine into a Web terminal? I can see programming a 32-bit handheld with 10 buttons to act as a simple calculator, but a typewriter?

or are you just talking about Wintendo?

Does anyone around here remember when Lik Sang used to be Bung Enterprises? Nintendo shut them down. About a month or two later, you were able to buy their new 'LikSang' branded products.

They'll be back.

I wonder if Halo 2 was on display?

Yes.

Consoles tend to have a large variety of controllers available as well, including a keyboard/controller combo and wireless controllers. The only type of controller that I've never seen for a console is a mouse.

I can download a GBA emulator and Yoshi's island if I so desired.

You can download a GBA emulator and buy a cart reader, but Yoshi's Island doesn't come out until tomorrow.

Tetris attack Zoop? I can buy a 12 dollar gravis gamepad that is almost exactly like the playstation controller, you know, with directional pads.

I own a Gravis GamePad Pro USB. It may look like a PSX pad, but it sure doesn't feel like one. Its directional control feels really cheap. The only way to play console-style games on a PC and have them feel right is to buy an authentic console controller and a console->USB adapter.

The point was that there are some games that don't work well with a keyboard, and that most of the joypads out for the PC just don't feel right for console games that are all timing and muscle memory.

You can always try this out, just get a Nintendo64, and rent Starcraft64, and you're off! I've heard that it's both really awful, and good for what it is.

I've seen screen shots with abominably low resolutions, having only 4 groups of 9 hot-keyed, instead of 9 groups of 12, and split screen two player mode. As a big fan of the original SC, I don't think I could deal. One of my friends who is also a big Starcraft fan said that in the N64 vs. you tend to abandon all micro and go for mid tech swarm tactics, since everything else is impossible to pull off with the analog control stick.